Hold the front page....Man has turkey sandwich!

Google released real-time search this week, incorporating
Twitter and kin. So we at Greenlight took it for a road test. We
evaluated what the pros and cons are for users and for
marketers. Amidst all the hype, I can't help feeling the
usefulness of the results seems to range from the inconsequential,
to the surreally disappointing.

Admittedly these are early days, but in our first road tests,
which happened to be on searches for 'Turkey' i.e. the country not
the game fare, the impressive list of relevant results, which
included Lonely Planet, The State Department, The CIA, The Turkish
Tourism Ministry, had somehow been permeated by the resounding
news, that 'thoughtbeast' (presumably an alias), was enjoying a
sliced turkey sandwich for lunch. With milk and Doritos, no
less!

Ok, fair enough. Seasonally relevant perhaps, but way off the
mark. Having been in search marketing for 10 years, and seen all
the Q&A that goes into search results to ensure they aren't
ravaged by nonsense, I am forced to ask just how far we have come,
if 'thoughtbeast' and his late lunch can pip the CIA for a page 1
spot on a one word search term of complete parallel. Already
sceptical, we are now immediately unimpressed.

Other searches produced similarly mundane and useless results,
this time in the brand space of certain large household names.

A search for 'Tesco' and 'Asda', (for me at least) revealed
little else, other than how useless and trivial the social sphere
can be sometimes, and just how undeserving some of this stuff is,
of inclusion in search results. So initially for me, it's just not
groundbreaking.

The majority of these inclusions are either just trivial pieces
of inconsequential chat, or they are citations of the sort of
information that is already available on the Google news results
window that has been there for some time now.

Take the very moment of 'Tiger woods' (see below). The news
results do their job. They are well placed at the top of the page
given the current relevancy of the topic. Then more news content,
plus a little bit of useless social chit chat.

At which point we're forced to ask just what value it actually
adds. Why not make the Google News insertion real-time if that's
what you want to do?

Fools/under pressure public companies, rush in

Given Google's efforts to organise the worlds information, this
live deluge of yet more news, interspersed with random transient
chit chat feels very un-Google. It is more like a knee jerk first
attempt to get something live to compete with Bing who for once,
(enjoy it while it lasts folks), has got the jump on Google, in
getting real-time search in there first. Arguably, Bing's done it
in a more relevant context too.

There is still much debate as to whether social comments like
this are worthy content or just references to them. Bing's approach
to listing the most socially cited links seems far more useful when
compared to Google's. Google's feels more like those times
when you would pick up the phone and suddenly end up with a crossed
line, and find yourself sitting there listening to two randoms
having a natter about something.

If you really want to present an overview of the information
available in the social sphere, there are better ways to do it than
this. A 'tag cloud' might do a better job. Consider
Greenlight's mock up (below), of the continuing 'Tiger woods' story
which we have created based on keyword analysis of Twitter results.
A 'tag cloud' could organise the myriad of chat and disparate
nuggets of information telling person searching what the key
trending topics are in the social sphere, and allowing them to
navigate to an aggregated and specific view of the collective
tweets relevant to the tag.

In my view, search has become too obsessed with presenting
everything in one multimedia interface. Whilst this is a fairly
noble pursuit, users are not overtly concerned with having to make
their way to information as long as they get what they want. A more
useful approach is definitely required. For the non-tech
savvy, 'Tag clouds' are not perfect, but even a simple list of
popular sub-topics would make this more useful.

No doubt this isn't it for real-time search. It'll be improved
on. However, the bigger issue for real-time search is what
search engines do with it. Tweets on the whole are generally either
citations of other content, messages, or publicly aired views, so
real-time data isn't always useful to present, although there's no
doubt it's a very effective barometer for what's of the moment.

Search engines need to better work out when they need to use
real-time data to create better results, and when real-time data,
actually is better results. It isn't all one and the same.

Implications for marketers and search marketers

The validity or quality of real-time content aside, what this is
doing is adding yet another window of 3rd party content into an
already crowded search engine results pages(SERP), pushing down
some natural results, and creating another opportunity for
visibility and/or detraction by third parties.

The big issues are:

Where is this likely to appear in keyword terms?

How does it affect the control we have, or want to have over
those spaces?

In our daily rank checks at Greenlight, we monitor hundreds of
thousands of keywords. We identified real-time results in less than
0.5% of them, and most of these were brand oriented keywords.

This leads us to conclude that for the time being, and as with
most 'universal search' elements, this is more likely to pop up in
your brand space, rather than in generic terms.

In other words, a brand like Tesco is more likely to see this
popping up in searches for 'Tesco', than it is in a search for
'Samsung 32 inch lcd'. This means that the impact on most generic
and product-led search activity will be minimal, unless they
suddenly gain significant and concentrated social
attention.

The bigger issue is reputational, since there's now a real-time
window in your branded search space for people chatting about you
however glowingly, controversially or mundanely that might be. This
creates further reputational issues in your branded search
strategy.

Opportunities

The right fostering of the social community in things you do in
real-time, can make their way into search far faster than they
would have done historically. For example, you have a special
offer, running a sale or promotion. These can now work their way
into search results. As such, there is definitely a positive angle
for this integration if it makes its way into your brand space.

What is interesting is whether this may actually have an impact
on branded terms that are part of your paid search strategy.
Pay per click (PPC) was previously the traditional route for rapid
response or timely tactical promos. If the social sphere gets wind
of your latest promotion, then it's quite possible that natural
real-time results could end up winning more brand traffic share,
which in turn could lighten the pressure on branded spend, and act
as a more compelling click area than the many competitors trying to
hijack traffic in your branded search space. Worth noting is that
if this happens, it will make full click path conversion tracking
absolutely crucial, as it may appear that your branded clicks and
conversions from paid search are declining.

Threats

The bigger issue is that there is now yet another window for
less than favourable conversation and discussion, to make its way
in to your branded search space. Of course this isn't a new thing.
Universal Search has been active for some time now. Images, video,
news, even blog posts, as well as traditional listings, are all
well known loose cannons that need to be continually watched and
tied down.

What this does is add one more, and underscores a long lamented
need to develop a strategy to tie down your branded search space,
and stay vigilant for any incursions into it. Some brands already
do this quite well and will likely find themselves fairly well
insulated. If you consider Vodafone below, there is good control of
the branded space already, and so there is less of an opportunity
for uncontrolled universal elements like real-time search, to make
its way in.

If you consider a brand like KFC below, the brand page is
littered with detractors in all forms and formats. For a brand with
this kind of representation, real-time search is yet another can of
worms to add to this, as an already open brand space filled with
detraction can only get worse.

What else could Google do with real-time integration?

What's clear is that real-time isn't going anywhere. But the
integrations thus far, are not really doing it justice.

As a final point, we thought we might as well go blue sky with a
few ideas that might make good real-time integrations.

Key listing integration: If you have a twitter
account that is associated with your company, you could opt to have
its feed included in your key brand listing. This would be an
enormous boon for brands who could then use the brands coverage in
natural search as a real-time tactical marketing tool

Twitter listing integration: If you're going to list a twitter
page in search results, then a feed of the data in the result would
do its listing more justice, than simply the biog line. Again, if a
brand's Twitter account can show in its branded search space,
brands have a real-time voice in to natural search results,
enabling them to deliver real-time messaging to their customers,
and help combat any detractive comment.

Real-time categories: Real-time data is disparate, and a 6 line
scrolling feed of random 'as it comes' chat, is far from ideal as
an interface. Categorising the noise into determinable topics of
possible interest alerts individuals to the real-time aspect of
what they are looking for, allowing them to further investigate the
item that's most relevant to them.

Perhaps the ideas expressed above are already in the pipeline. If
not, they would most certainly add more value to both users
and marketers alike, and provide for far more credible and useful
real-time search capabilities compared to what is currently
available.

Again it's still early days. As such, the mantra for now is still
the same as it ever was for marketers, defend the hill, and keep
watch. If you don't have a media monitoring strategy and action
plan in place, it's time to get one, because social media
integrations in search can now give quite a bite.